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> Why won't companies give the clothes to charities? > It's an image thing. They're trying to maintain exclusivity. We’ve reached a pretty dismal place as a s
by kevsim 7y ago
> Why won't companies give the clothes to charities?
> It's an image thing. They're trying to maintain exclusivity.
We’ve reached a pretty dismal place as a society where a company would rather burn their wares than to have a person in need get them.
- nashashmi 7y agoRemove the stitched brand then?
- shantly 7y agoIt’s kinda the title feature of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.
- tyingq 7y agoIn the 80's, stores like TJ Maxx would have branded items for very cheap, but the branding was cut off. Like Levi's jeans with the pocket tag and little brown rectangle cut off. I suppose that was for the same reason.
- Marsymars 7y agoOh I’d be totally into that. As is, I carefully use small scissors to remove brands/logos from any clothes/goods where they’re attached via stitching.
- VeninVidiaVicii 7y agoThis is pretty much the same scenario as the Grapes of Wrath, except with food.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoWouldn't "that, but with food", be the story of the Great Depression? AFAIR from history lessons, people would routinely destroy perfectly good crops and food shipments to keep the price high.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoClothing is the bottom of the heap for donations. Our church rumble sale, we ban donated clothes. Nobody buys them; they go to the dump.
- javajosh 7y agoThat'd sad. It seems to me that if there is such a glut a poor person in the US should basically never have to buy clothes.
- anigbrowl 7y agoWhy don't you just give them to poor people? You know,for free?
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoAs I said, nobody wants them. Nobody comes in for them, no matter what the price.
- anigbrowl 7y agoI don't know where your church is but individual homeless people may not be able to trek around town to visit one of your rumble sales or even know that they're taking place. Perhaps sorting for durability and insulation (rather than fashion value) and driving around with a pickup asking people if they need warm clothes would be a more effective approach.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoFeel free. The point is, the clothes are not the issue. Its the effort it takes. There are places that do that (Salvation Army etc) and they have absolutely no trouble getting clothes.
- jhrkjweh 7y agoImagine seeing poor kids wearing authentic Supreme/Balenciaga and holding iPhone X's. Who would buy those things anymore? The only reason to buy a luxury brand is to signal that you are not poor.
- cmdshiftf4 7y agoYou're getting slammed for simply pointing out how luxury goods work. Obviously a Prada coat isn't worth 10-20x the price of a non-Prada coat, but the value in the signal provided by it clearly makes up the difference for those purchasing it. Removing that signal makes it merely another coat, in a market flooded with non-Prada coats, and hence becomes comparatively useless to everyone. That less-wealthy people will flock to, and keep demand high for, knock-off designer goods to try to obtain the same signal without the price tag in favour of just buying a quality product at their own price point only emboldens that point. There's value in the signal, that signal is exclusivity by virtue of wealth, and if the exclusivity of that signal reduces or is removed then it becomes worthless to everyone involved. IPhones are a different matter. They haven't much of a signal of exclusivity or wealth because, for whatever reason, even the poor will seemingly make whatever sacrifice they need to, or impose on others, to get their hands on them. I'm regularly on transit through some very, very poor areas and yet their kids all have iPhones, often the very latest. God knows what was done to enable that circumstance, but it's quite different from, say, a legitimate Prada jacket.